by Karen Swan
‘Oh my God,’ Elle drawled, taking in the buzzy scene. ‘You took a client to this?’
‘Well, rather, he took me.’ She grabbed Elle by the arm. ‘Come over here, you’ve got to try the chilaquiles at this Mexican place.’
‘Chila-what?’ Elle blustered. ‘Is that some fancy name for a taco?’
Chloe laughed; hadn’t her reaction been exactly the same? ‘Trust me, they do those too but the food here is unlike any Mexican food you’ve had before. It’s gonna blow your mind. They even add pomegranate seeds to the guacamole. It’s so pretty you don’t know whether to eat it or wear it.’
They walked past trucks selling sweet sourdough doughnuts, olive breads, lobster rolls, pastrami cuts; Chloe stopped at the end of the line for Chimichanga Taqueria. The aroma drifting from the cart was delicious and Elle both closed her eyes and clutched her stomach in a display of appreciation and anguish; waiting for food wasn’t her strong point.
The line shuffled forwards and soon they were tantalizingly close to the front.
‘What’ll it be, ladies?’ asked the curly black-haired woman who had served her and Joe the other day. Ariane, was it? She didn’t appear to recognize Chloe at any rate.
‘Apparently I’ve got to have the chila-thingies,’ Elle called up to her.
‘Make that two,’ Chloe added.
‘Two chilaquiles,’ the woman called to a line of people working behind her, their backs to the market as they chopped chillies and peppers at lightning speed and ground avocadoes with pestles and mortars. ‘Any drinks with that?’
‘A couple of beers,’ Elle said.
‘That’ll be sixteen bucks,’ the woman said, holding out her hand.
‘I’ll get this,’ Chloe said, holding out the notes before Elle could reach for her purse. ‘It’s my turn.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ Elle squeezed her arm gratefully – she was perpetually broke, spending what little money she had on her beloved vintage finds. The two of them scanned the rest of the food market as they waited with watering mouths. Almost all the trestles were taken.
‘Do you want to wait for this and I’ll go get us some seats?’ Chloe asked.
Elle shot her a bemused look. ‘You? The English girl? We’d be here all day with you queuing and saying “sorry” every time someone stole your seat.’ She patted Chloe on the arm with a laugh. ‘No, sweetie, you wait for the food and I’ll go find us somewhere to sit. Leave this with me.’
Chloe grinned, watching her bold friend sashay into the fray, paper shopping bags swinging from her hand. Sure enough, within a minute of standing ominously above a couple who’d finished their meals and were selfishly lingering, she’d bagged them some places.
Chloe looked around the market with interest as she waited; there hadn’t been time to take in the detail with Joe the other day and when she’d mentioned it to Xan on her return to the office afterwards, he’d told her about the one on Union Street too. She kept wondering about some kind of tie-up for their members . . . but how? The very appeal of a place like this lay in its accessibility. She didn’t think the stallholders would be particularly amenable to the idea of hooking up special deals for an already over-privileged elite – but that only served to make it more desirable in her eyes. To paraphrase the late, great Groucho Marx, her members wanted to belong to any club that wouldn’t have them.
‘There you go.’
She turned back to take the food, already almost able to taste it—
‘Joe?’
He looked down at her in surprise, frozen, the bowls outstretched in his hands in front of him. ‘Chloe.’ He looked every bit as stunned as she was.
‘What . . . what are you doing here?’ she laughed, unable to hold it in. Of all the unlikely scenarios! His face was a picture; he didn’t look quite so superior or arrogant now. In fact, he looked lost for words.
‘I got back from France yesterday.’
As if that had been her point! ‘No, I mean – what are you doing here?’ She motioned to the street food market.
‘Oh! Yeah, I’m helping out.’
No shit, Sherlock! she thought to herself, but she couldn’t wipe the surprised expression from her face. This was literally The Last Thing she could have expected to see. What next – Alexander Subocheva manning stalls at a jumble sale? Was it a pro-bono thing?
‘It’s run by some friends of mine and they get real busy so, occasionally, if I’m tooling around, I pitch in for an hour or so. Just to get them through the lunchtime rush.’ He shrugged, taking in her still astonished expression. ‘What? It’s fun. It gives me a complete break from my routine. Plus it’s helping with the jet lag today. There’s no chance of sleeping here.’
‘Oh yes, absolutely. Absolutely,’ she agreed, trying not to stare at the sight of him in a long black apron. Bizarrely, he somehow made it look sort of . . . manly.
A little silence pulsed.
‘Actually, I was going to call you on Monday anyway – find out how the property search is going?’
She cracked open another smile; it was somewhat ironic to be discussing a money-no-object holiday home with the man serving her a posh taco. ‘It’s going well!’ she laughed, shaking her head. This was crazy. ‘. . . Uh, so I’ve made lots of calls and spoken to some contacts in the region; they’ve helped me identify some islands I think best fit your brief, so now I’m researching those more closely and I’m getting a shortlist together. I’m hoping I should be able to show something to you soon.’
‘Good, I can’t wait to see—’
‘Joe! Two panuchos?’ the woman taking the orders called over, shooting him an impatient look.
He looked back at her, pulling a face. ‘I’d better get back—’
‘Of course, yes. You’re needed,’ she said, beginning to laugh all over again. Did Ariane know she was bossing about a major captain of industry?
‘It’s not that funny!’
‘Oh, it really is!’ she guffawed. She had a proper case of the giggles now as she took the plates off the counter, her face red with suppressed bluster. ‘You must go . . . but it was good to see you.’
He looked down at her, seemingly bemused by her hysterics and, to her surprise, as their eyes met she felt a tiny spark inside her stomach, like a pilot light trying to ignite. His entire demeanour was different from their first meeting – weekend feels? ‘Call me.’
The laughter died in her throat and she swallowed hard. ‘Yes. I will.’ It was a professional order, of course, nothing more, but in that flash of a moment, in another light or another life . . . She walked over to Elle, feeling high, and somewhat bewildered.
‘Well?’ Elle breathed dramatically. ‘Don’t keep me hanging. Who the hell is he and did you get his number?’ Her words came out in an unbroken rush.
‘His name’s Joe and I’ve already got it. He’s a client.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘He’s hot!’
‘He’s a client,’ Chloe sighed, handing over Elle’s plate, but Elle was still too busy eyeing him up to notice.
‘Wait a minute, what’s he doing making chickadoo-things or whatever you call them, if he’s a client of yours? I don’t want to think how many he’d have to make to afford your fees.’
‘It’s his friend’s truck, he’s just helping out. He owns an engineering company.’
‘You know that for a fact, do you?’ Elle asked, her eyes still pinned upon him. ‘I ain’t never seen an engineering boss look like him before. Don’t they need to be bald and short-sighted?’
‘I have performed due diligence,’ Chloe smiled, glad her back was to him as she began to tuck in. She had confirmed his details at Companies House and was satisfied that everything checked out, but the company website was one of those artsy ones that was big on ambient lifestyle shots and images of their projects, but precious little on the personalities running the show. Google hadn’t produced much more – he didn’t have any social media accounts that she could see, and there weren’t any paparazzi image
s of him at industry events or charity circuit parties, which chimed with his lack of interest in using Invicta to get on the city’s hottest VIP lists; he was as elusive and discreet as his Swiss banking card.
Chloe took a bite of the chilaquile and slumped with happiness. ‘Ohmigod that’s so good,’ she moaned, running the words into one another. Coming to eat here after their Saturday morning market mooch might have to become a habit, she thought to herself.
‘So he’s hot and rich and generous – tell me more.’
‘Can’t, client confidentiality.’ Chloe dabbed the corner of her mouth with her finger, sure she was dribbling, it tasted so good.
‘Oh, don’t give me that,’ Elle admonished, her eyes still on him. ‘You can at least give me his number.’
‘I definitely can’t do that!’ she guffawed.
‘Why? Do you want to date him?’
‘Elle, he’s my client,’ she repeated with a groan.
‘So then you can give me first dibs. Can’t you engineer a meeting?’ She laughed wildly at her little joke.
‘I’m there to fulfil his requirements, not dictate them.’
‘Hmm, and wouldn’t I just love to fulfil his requirements,’ Elle said with a wicked grin. ‘Hey, you could always invite him to that Basquiat retrospective you were telling me about.’
Chloe smiled; her friend was incorrigible. A veritable man-eater. Turning round slightly, her eyes slid over to him again – he was chatting and handing over plates to another set of eager customers. But what was she going to do? Even if she was looking – which she wasn’t – he was a client and that made him the last person she could ever go on a date with. No. Whatever . . . whatever that moment had been back there, she just had to suck it up.
‘Come on, help a girl out,’ Elle pouted. ‘I got me a dress and a party and no date.’
Chloe collapsed into a grin. ‘Well, I could send him an email flagging it up,’ she said slowly, licking sauce off her fingers. ‘I guess there’s no harm in that.’
Chapter Eleven
Even with heels, the dress was a little long. Elle could have worn it with flip-flops and it would have hung perfectly, but on her, the cornflower-blue silk puddled on the floor.
‘Dammit, silver heels . . . silver heels,’ she muttered to herself – they were the only ones with the requisite height to keep her from tripping on the hem – squatting as best she could in the dress to get a better look at the shoe boxes piled under her bed. She still couldn’t get used to having quite so little space. Her shoes had to be kept under the bed, her coats hanging from a drying rail above the bath and the shelf that ran high up on every wall in every room of the apartment, which she had thought such a quirk when she’d rented it, was positively groaning from the weight of lidded boxes storing everything from underwear to hairbands to wooden spoons.
She found the heels wrongly packed in a box with her tax returns and went back to the mirror again. Behind her, in the reflection, was proof of the carnage that had been involved in getting her to this serene point – dresses strewn all over the bed, various bras for different necklines dangling like caught fish on the bedstead, shoes toppled like bowling pins, powder, blusher and eyeshadows sprinkled on the dressing table . . . Yes. She twisted one way, then the other, trying to get an all-round look. The dress didn’t quite achieve the same feats of engineering as Elle’s Cyndi Lauper redux dress, but nonetheless the wide twisted chiffon straps and the wrap-over bodice did wonders for emphasizing her hip-to-waist ratio. Chloe couldn’t stop looking at her own reflection. Put on a tiara and she’d be a veritable princess! She never got dressed up like this – her job meant enabling it for others, not for herself.
She caught herself, suddenly chastened. Her job? Hers? It was Poppy’s. It was Poppy who ought to be standing here, dressed up to the nines and ready to sparkle. Instead she was . . . she was . . .
The buzzer rang, making her jump. His driver, no doubt. She skittered over to the intercom and spoke into it. ‘I’ll be right down!’ she called brightly, trying to sound calm, in control and professional.
It was six exactly and frankly she needed another quarter of an hour before she’d be properly ready. She still had to backcomb her hair at the roots, that wing eyeliner to correct and she hadn’t settled on a pair of earrings yet . . . Still, he wasn’t a man to be kept waiting. She sat on the bed, buckling the sandals as best she could, but the bodice of the dress was so tight, it was a miracle she could breathe, much less bend.
The buzzer went again. ‘Yes, I’m coming. I heard you the first time,’ she muttered out loud and to no one in particular, hobbling over to the door again.
‘Hi. I’ll be just a minute,’ she said cheerily into the intercom. Didn’t this driver know it was rude to turn up somewhere on time, that women cannot be rushed when getting ready for an evening out? ‘We’re like paintings,’ she mused to herself, putting in her stud earrings that she’d left on her bedside table and appraising her reflection; the silver shoes were – blessedly, as hoped – just high enough to bring the hem off the floor. ‘Ready when we’re ready.’
She pouted, struck a pose, then another. She considered Instagramming it; Jack was big on his staff showing their followers snippets of the glamorous lifestyle they offered access to, but – as the buzzer went again – there was no time now. Perhaps when they were there.
Without bothering to reply this time, she pulled the door closed on her apartment and went down the stairs as quickly as she dared in the dress, throwing open the building door with a flourish and a smile a few moments later, only just stopping short of a ‘tada!’
And it was as well she did, because to her surprise, two men were standing together rather awkwardly on the top step, clearly both vying for the intercom.
‘Tom!’
‘Chloe—’ He jumped to attention like a soldier on parade, a flamboyant bouquet of yellow freesias – her favourites – filling his arms.
The man to her right, in a driver’s uniform, nodded his head with a taciturn expression. ‘Miss Marston?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you’re ready?’ he said, motioning towards the sleek black limo idling on the street. The windows were blacked out completely.
‘Absolutely,’ she said, picking up her skirt daintily to see her feet as she walked down the steps, moving after him as though there was no one else there.
‘Chloe, wait,’ Tom said, an incredulous note in his voice as he reached for her, awkwardly, the flowers threatening to spill from his hold.
‘No,’ she snapped under her breath, pulling herself out of reach. ‘I’m busy.’
‘Doing what?’ His eyes raked over her, desperation in them, and she knew she looked good. If Elle had been here, she would have made her pop a hip. ‘Where are you going?’ He seemed to have forgotten he was holding the bouquet, cradling it in his arms like a sleeping baby.
‘That’s none of your business,’ she replied coolly.
‘Who is that? Who’s in the car?’ he asked, peering at the blacked-out windows of the limo, but to no avail. Chloe could have told him those windows were bulletproof; if they wouldn’t let a sniper’s rifle do its worst, his jealousy had no chance.
‘As I said – none of your business.’ Let him stew, she thought, pleased by the anguish in his boyish features.
‘Chloe, wait—’ He let the flowers drop as he caught her by the elbow this time and his touch singed her skin, making her blanch. ‘Give me a time then, a place. Tomorrow – we can have Sunday brunch. Please, we have to talk.’
‘No, we really don’t.’
‘This is crazy. You can’t keep avoiding me.’
She pulled her arm away from him but there was no hurry in the movement; it was like peeling back a plaster, inch by inch. ‘Can’t I, Tom? Like this, you mean?’ She moved down the steps with glacial dignity. ‘Can’t I?’
‘It is good of you to step in at such short notice,’ Alexander said as the car pulled away, the tail-lights of the taxi
in front casting them in a red glow, her heart still at a canter.
Had he witnessed the scene just now as Tom doorstepped her? How could he not have done? He was just too much of a gentleman to comment on it. Did she look as flustered as she felt? She glanced back to find Tom picking up the flowers off the step, their heads down in his limp arm as he watched them glide into the night.
‘Are you kidding? A night at the Met? Who doesn’t love that?’ she lied through a bright smile, trying to slow her breathing down. Adrenaline was racing through her, the lies coming one on top of the other, first to Tom, now him. She wondered what Alexander would say if she told him the man responsible for her continent swap was standing right there, back on those steps.
‘You look beautiful – if I am allowed to say such a thing?’
‘Thank you, you’re very kind.’ She had borrowed the dress off her contact at Barneys and the tags were still in for return on Monday, sticking against her skin; she wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was imprinted with a reverse Elie Saab logo when she got in later.
‘Would you like a glass of champagne?’ he asked, indicating the bottle of Krug that sat nestled in a bed of ice between them.
‘How lovely,’ she accepted. A drink was exactly what she needed right now. She imagined she could still feel Tom’s hand on her skin; it had been their first touch since what had been unwittingly their last night together, back in February.
She watched as he peeled back the gold foil and popped the cork effortlessly. His might was implied in every movement, though he didn’t move much. Perhaps that was why.
‘So have you seen La Trav before?’ she asked, plumbing into the small talk that came so easily to her these days, chattering about nothing of consequence and keeping the big conversations on mute. It was the definition of her New York nights.
‘Many times, but not this version. You?’ The city flickered darkly behind him, smoke-tinted behind the extra-thick windows. He handed her the glass before returning the bottle to the ice. Chloe faltered – was he not going to have one too?